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Metal Gear Rising [Video Game Review]

This is very much a “stupid fun” type of game. The story is fucking retarded and the game is only around 5 and a half hours in length, it’s basically an arcade game thrown onto consoles. But it IS very fun. This isn’t exactly my best writing, but I just wanted to put something together real quick about this as I just finished and sent it back to gamefly today.

This is one game that may have been more fun on a Wii (NOT a wii U) thanks to the waggle stick, it would have been cool to use it for Blade Mode. One of my biggest complaints was actually about Blade Mode, you could press square or triangle for random cuts (which I never used) – OR you could aim it with the right stick. The problem is it’s a little analog stick in a circle, so getting it accurate when you actually need to (two bosses) is basically impossible. First you have to position the damn thing, then you have to go back perfectly smoothly in the right direction – but fast – to get Raiden to cut, and doing this is near impossible. Either you go too slow and it doesn’t cut (ending with you getting hit usually) or you fuck up and don’t go perfectly, hitting the wrong spot. Not only was this a problem with two bosses – it was really annoying when trying to just get the health refills from enemies, so I’d just resort to mashing square and triangle to get them in many cases which just isn’t as fun. Watching people and big mechs fly into pieces still was entertaining either way.

The best parts of the game were blade mode – even with all those complaints above – and, no surprise, Sunny. She’s still a very little kid, but she’s adorable and wears a really cute outfit now too. She was the star of the game even though she was only around for a few minutes total at the most, maybe only a couple. Aside that I’d say I really liked the AI dog too, I love when you’ve got a partner in single player games – and while he didn’t participate in fights with you, you still felt that camaraderie with him and he was one of the only characters (aside sunny) who was interesting enough to use the codec to talk to. He also has the best theme music when you fight him early in the game. The music was pretty cool within the game as well – though, unlike many others, I’d have to say it kind of sucks outside of being played in the context of the game. I’m not into this type of music, but it worked really well and sounded awesome during gameplay. I figured Raiden would be a shitty protagonist, but I felt like he wasn’t that bad this time around.

The worst parts of the game would be;

1. The short length – the game ends pathetically fast, it’s almost as short as a Call of Duty campaign, and those are games focused on the (shitty) multiplayer. The fact this WHOLE GAME is just these ~5 hours is kind of terrible. Almost all of that time is fun as hell, but not worth buying it. Renting like I did, though? Definitely. The idea behind it is that you go back and replay the missions to get higher scores, but unless you’re really into that arcade style of thinking you won’t find yourself wanting to replay through more than maybe once.

2. The controls – a lot of the time they work perfectly fine and feel good. One problem I got a lot was while trying to open the equipment screen which is just pressing left or right on the d-pad. You’d think this is easy, but no, you have to be; a. Standing perfectly still. b. Not being attacked and not attacking. c. Be both of those for at least a couple seconds, which, in a game like this is nearly impossible unless you’re entirely out of combat. Another problem was that you had to hold down the button to stay in the box/drum instead of just being able to tap it on and off like in typical MGS games, almost like it was encouraging you NOT to be stealthy at all. And again, blade mode could sometimes be extremely frustrating.

The best thing about the game.

3. The camera – it’s just shit, plain and simple. At default (5) it’s extremely uselessly slow, but if you crank it up you go from a couple that are still just as slow to suddenly WAY too fast and hard to control well because of THAT issue. Also, if you’re anywhere near a wall you can’t keep the camera from having a constant seizure or blocking your view entirely. Another way the game fucks you for trying to sneak – also screwing you in combat this time.

4. The bosses – I didn’t really enjoy a single boss fight aside Ray in the introduction mission before I knew how to parry and all that properly. It was fun and exciting and got you into the game very well. The problem is after that a lot of bosses are just kind of boring and frustrating, and clearly are made to extend the game time rather than add to the game as a whole. 90% of the time, after you get good at it, all you have to do is parry over and over and over and this is usually the best tactic. The thing is “over and over and over” really goes on for fucking ever – or at least FEELS like forever. It’s just not fun hearing “I’M FUCKIN INVINCIBLE” a thousand goddamn times. I beat most of them on my first try, but they were extremely unfun and never felt rewarding. On the OTHER side of things were bosses that were just unbelievably easy – like the Mercedes (Dragons Dogma) wannabe with the big stick who you can kill by mashing an attack button in no time at all. The worst boss would be the final one, he’s annoying and interrupts the fight with a new endless cutscene every five seconds (filled with some extremely cringe-worthy bullshit to say), it’s like if they took the fucking 4 hour ending to MGS4 and put in a couple of minutes of gameplay every 20 minutes.

5. That retarded kid you save.

Overall, very fun, very short, and outside of the combat – an unrewarding experience. This is definitely a game you play for the gameplay and nothing else.

I’d say it’s totally worth renting for the mindless fun cutting things (be it enemies or just boxes, pillars, buses, whatever) into bits and pieces gives you, but entirely not worth buying unless the price goes below like $20 or so at most. There’s just not enough content and there are too many faults to the game for anything more than that.